Heard on the radio this morning a great quote from the owner of Russ & Daughters, a 4th generation seller of lox, whitefish, and other spreads: 

“We’re dealing with a finicky product,” Federman says. “We’re talking about fish, most of it wild. Every fish is different. Every customer is different. Every employee is different. And the idea is to be able to line up fish and customer and counterman perfectly hundreds of times a day.”

Yup. Talent Management in a nutshell (or net)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/03/173264635/family-keeps-jewish-soulfood-alive-at-new-york-appetizing-store 

While this is not a talent management book, the work has profound implications for how we think about the work done in HR circles. For example, Nass has proven that the most common method of doing performance reviews by managers (he calls it the “compliment sandwich” – compliment, criticism, compliment) actually leaves the reviewed employee with the wrong message. They remember the last compliment, not the thing to change. 

There’s a nice piece on Nass’ work (and others) from the radio today here. 

Happy Holidays everyone.

And may both you and your data both grow and prosper exponentially in 2013.

Compliments of xkcd.com

I don’t know what the plan is, but I would love to get my hands on the big data that results!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cooking can be surprisingly forgiving | Science & Society | Science News.

1. The team that developed it was 160 people strong, with economists, financial folks, hr analytics folks, generalists, and risk managers.

2. We know that it’s impossible to factor every critical HC metric for every type of business into a standard. The ANSI method discourages this. It looks for a minimally effective standard. If we knew more today about a company than yesterday, would these be the 6 items we would choose?

3. In a world far removed from most of our everyday lives, this type of disclosure has already been written, but without HRs perspective. The intangibles and sustainability community are already releasing data like this. But we can help make it better with more expertise in human capital.

And finally, the most critical.. ANSI standards are voluntary. No one is forcing us to disclose data we wish not to.

Please do shoot me questions or post them below!

I didn’t engage him heavily, it was after all, a stranger on a train… but, what I was thinking was, ” Wow, that would be a terrible doctor that only relied on the evidence provided from a specific set of tests he/she ordered.” Would you keep going to a doctor that looked past your feedback and just used the results of a test?

This, to me, is one of the fundamental misunderstandings of any evidence-based decision.  I don’t know if it’s more a fear by people who don’t use the data more than a reality of inexperienced practitioners, but proper consumption of evidence certainly merits discussion.

Good consumers of data are interested in both the digital and the analog – they know that you can’t see the whole picture through either one. Digital results can skew your opinion just as easily as analog ones.

When dealing with decisions regarding humans (medicine, marketing, talent management) – we ignore anecdotes at our peril.  A friend of mine just told me an (unvalidated by me) story on a marketing campaign for an air freshener. They had loads of data about customer perceptions of the product, but it wasn’t until they followed around the product’s #1 fan for a day that they realized what the marketing hook was. They couldn’t see her son’s stinky socks in the data, and apparently, for this decision, that’s what they needed.

Any time we’re dealing with data about human behavior, I always find it helpful to stop for a moment and recognize that behind the numbers are people with feelings, with kids ( their socks), and certainly with their own free will.

That’s how you see the forest through the trees and make the right decision.

Haas School of Business Researcher Henry Chesbrough talking about Open Innovation.

But in this interview, the CEO used a word to describe his games that I’d not heard before. He wants to make his games, “snacky”. What a great description of how we play games on mobile devices, right? We pick them up, play for a few seconds or minutes. Put it down, and pick it up again in a few minutes. Designing games like this is actually quite hard, but when done right, they can be big hits. (now, if this idea isn’t familiar to you yet, please, stop reading and go directly to your mobile device and download Fruit Ninja. I apologize in advance for getting you hooked.) “Snacky” games are played for seconds or minutes. Other games are played much longer.

So now let’s talk HR tech, where all of the buzz is about, “gamification”. Software developers want to make our HR software more useable, and dare we say…. Fun. This is welcome news, since much of what has existed in the past has needed an owners manual the size of my Dad’s Buick to operate.  There are more and more excellent iPad apps for HR and managers to use. User interfaces are improving.

Here’s my question. Are we in HR Tech rushing to gamification, when we should be rushing to not just make our software easier to use, but also, “Snacky”? Are we building based on the last idea (gamification), and not leaping ahead to how users want to use software today?  (I’m really asking this as a question, would love to hear your thoughts.)
What would a snack-sized HR system even look like? How would managers uses it?

The possibilities are enormous.  Real time feedback on employees based on 2 swipes of the thumb. Posting a job to the world by pushing it into a cloud.  The boring stuff could be fun.
If you’re in the software side of HR, please… Cut the Rope, slash some fruit with a sword, take a Jungle Run, and come on back to tell us if there’s room in HR for some snacks.